Congress: "Am I talkin' to me?"

Congressional Quarterly reports today that a number of high ranking members of Congress have missed a deadline that required them to disclose their ties to political actions committees.
The funny thing is that many of them sponsored the bill requiring the disclosure.

The purpose of the law was to allow the American people to see for the first time all contributions recieved by lawmakers from lobbyists and general donors. It is directed at "leadership PAC's". The law requires that any fund-raising committee must file as a leadership PAC “if the committee is directly or indirectly established, financed, maintained or controlled by a federal candidate or officeholder. Pretty clear to me, but not to some of those who wrote the law in the first place.

These PAC's are generally used to funnel money into other members campaign coffers. So the next time one member needs votes to get their pet project funded, they know just who to go to. Oh, but I'm sure that just doesn't happen.

One of the members who did not file was John Murtha (D-PA), who had an aide acknowledge the "oversight error", and then "corrected the mistake" after being contacted by Congressional Quarterly.

There are 91 others who did not comply with the disclosure law. Which leads me to wonder what would happen to the rest of us if we ignored the law and didn't report all of our earnings at tax time. Or we just said, "oops, I forgot!" Is there a penalty for these folks like there is for us when we break reporting laws?

Just wondering.